Wilderness Adventure
by HappyBirthdaySerialgal
Summary: A story in which the pristine beauty of Washington State escapes everyone's attention. Written as the world's longest oneshot in commemoration of Serialgal's February 11 birthday, by her friends Alice I, dHall, FraidyCat and OughtaKnowBetter


**Wilderness Adventure**  
_a story in which the pristine beauty of Washington State escapes everyone's attention_  
_  
__Written as the world's longest oneshot in commemoration of Serialgal's February 11 birthday,  
by her friends Alice I, dHall, FraidyCat and OughtaKnowBetter_

_(Serving as our Special Beta Engineer: dHall)_

__

All authors listed disavow ownership of the CBS television series "Numb3rs", or its characters

.................................................................................................................

Charlie hung upside-down, the shoulder harness cutting into the flesh on the right side of his neck, and contemplated his position.

He was having some difficulty thinking, but math was his strong subject. He put two and two together, and determined that if he was upside-down, the Prius must be on its roof. That was almost certainly not a good thing.

The rain that was dripping down his forehead and soaking his curls was distracting, and he started to lift his left hand so that he could brush some of it away. Unbidden, a scream tore from his throat and he jerked; also involuntarily. Fire. His arm was on fire, burning with a pain he had never known before in his lifetime. The scream tapered off with a sob.

He wouldn't try _that_ again.

Carefully, full of apprehension, he tried moving his right arm. His rapid respirations slowed a little as he discovered that this was a doable task; this did not seem to ignite the same life-threatening pain. That was good. Ever so slowly, he reached toward his forehead, wondering as he did where the rain was coming from in the first place. His fingers encountered a sticky substance then, and with a new spike of pain and clarity, Charlie realized a few things. This was not rain; there was a bleeding gash over his left eyebrow; and this qualified for the "not good" category.

"Shit," he whispered, lowering his shaking arm again. No wonder things were a little fuzzy.

He started to frown, but that hurt, so he stopped. He licked his lips and wondered why the Prius was upside-down in the middle of...the middle of...where was he, again? His headache bumped up a notch as Charlie demanded memories from his scrambled brain. Before he retrieved any, he started to wonder why there wasn't a marshmallow in his face. "Hello?" he said, moving his head just a little to aim the trajectory of his voice.

Charlie had hit his head hard -- but not hard enough to release the airbags, apparently, and not hard enough to forget that his rear-view mirror should be talking to him. When he bought the Prius, it came with a year of OnStar, and he had faithfully paid to continue coverage each of the last two years. Amita had practically begged, even offering to pay for it herself, claiming that she would feel better if he was covered during automotive emergencies. "This is L.A.," she had argued, blushing a little. "And sometimes you get a little distracted."

Hmm.

Like now.

What was he thinking about, again?

Charlie heard a groan and wondered who else was in the car. "Hello?" he repeated.

"Shut-up," someone answered, and with a flash of brilliant light, Charlie was struck by a memory.

He squeezed his eyes shut against the painful light. "We are so screwed," he whispered, as more came back than he wanted to know. He wasn't in the Prius, and there was no magic voice in the rear-view mirror. He wasn't even in California. He was hanging upside-down somewhere in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. He had thought it was raining in his hair because this was a geographical area that experienced over 100 inches of rainfall per year. To top it off, it had been raining pretty much non-stop ever since they had arrived nearly two days ago. They were traveling along the Upper Hoh Road that branched off the 101 South headed for the Hoh Rain Forest Visitors' Center. From there, he and his companion were to head into the Olympic wilderness to Mt. Carrie and the Carrie Glacier.

Charlie now realized that he did not have his trusted Prius, but was suspended upside-down behind the wheel of an old and rusty GMC Jimmy with "four-wheel-drive and an attitude", according to the Hoh Indian Reservation guide who had rented them the vehicle. Charlie was fond of the outdoors and of hiking, but this lush green and unbelievably wet part of the country held as little appeal for him as his companion, who groaned again from the back of the SUV. Charlie had to admit that the sturdy vehicle had held up far better than his Prius would have considering that they had rolled down a rather steep incline near the High Divide. The voice from the back was no longer groaning but complaining in a petulant tone that sent waves of irritation through Charlie.

"I told you that the road would be too wet and unstable to traverse in this bucket!" came the peevish voice of Marshall Penfield.

Marshall was in the back seat because his long gangly legs wouldn't fit up front, as both seats had essentially rusted in position and couldn't be pushed back to accommodate anyone over the height of five foot seven inches. Penfield's six-foot frame simply would not fit comfortably in the front of the vehicle. He didn't mind too much, as he decided to view Charlie as his chauffeur. The only real problem Penfield had was that 'Eppesie' had been in the driver's seat and in control of which road they took.

Marshall looked around and saw that all of their equipment had fallen into an unruly mess on the roof of the truck. He was held in place by his seat belt and impulsively unlatched himself. Dropping in a crumpled heap on the roof of the Jimmy, along with all of Cal Sci's rather expensive monitoring equipment, caused a sudden shift in weight. Marshall froze as the Jimmy began to rock unsteadily and Charlie called out, "Hey! You okay?"

Marshall ran unsteady hands over himself, taking stock of his injuries. He vaguely recalled having been struck by one of the heavy metal cases that contained their equipment during the barrel roll down the embankment and into the gorge where they had settled rather precariously on a narrow natural ledge. He was bruised and battered, with a nasty cut on his right forearm, but other than that, and the worst case of jangled nerves he'd ever experienced, he was essentially unhurt.

Working to keep the waver out of his voice, he answered Charlie's inquiry. "I think I'll survive, "then he added acerbically, "No thanks to your brilliant driving, Eppesie."

Charlie didn't have the energy to exchange caustic remarks with Marshall so he simply ignored the comment. "Can you move?"

Marshall frowned in irritation, unable to contain his perception that this was all Charlie's fault. After all, he was doing the driving. "Yeah, I can move. I just did in case you hadn't noticed. My arm is a mess and you owe me a new shirt!" he whined. Then, realizing what an incredible ass he was being, guiltily added, "What about you?"

"I think I hit my head." Charlie's voice quivered a little as he continued. "I'm pretty sure my left arm is broken. I tried to move it and it…" He paused to take a shuddering breath. "Well, let's just say I don't really want to move it again."

Cautiously, Marshall pushed one of the large metal equipment cases aside. Getting a better look at Charlie, he was instantly filled with remorse for his earlier attitude.

He couldn't see all of Charlie's injuries directly because the closer he leaned toward the front of the cab, the more the vehicle wanted to shift under his weight. However, he could see him quite well in the rearview mirror and judging from the amount of blood dripping from his head and the twisted and disfigured shape of his left arm, the younger man was seriously injured.

Trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, Marshall commented, "You look just charming don't you?"

Charlie tried to turn his head toward the sound of Marshall's voice, fully prepared to deliver a blistering reply, but a wave of dizziness caused him to groan instead. His eyes rolled up, the lids fluttering rapidly, and it looked to Marshal as though he were going to pass out.

"Charlie! Hey, can you hear me?"

After a moment, Charlie opened his eyes again. This time he didn't try to move at all. Marshall could see how red Charlie's face was and his pulse was evident in the way the blood pooled out of the gash over his left eye.

"Look, Charlie, we need to get you out of that seat belt. Do you think you can reach the latch with your right hand?"

Charlie took a deep breath and tried to remain calm as he considered what Marshall was proposing. If he unlatched the seat belt, he would fall to the roof of the vehicle. Considering the fact that every time Marshall moved the truck responded by shifting its position, he was worried that the sudden transfer of weight could dislodge them from their perch and send the vehicle rolling further downhill with them and their equipment being tossed around like the balls in a bingo cage. The other consideration was the fact that the vehicle might not move at all, a highly unlikely scenario, but Charlie was certain that the drop would hurt more than it had when he'd tried to raise his left hand.

"I don't know, Marshall. Can you tell how far we rolled?" Charlie went on beseechingly. "Maybe you could get yourself out of the truck and see where we are. Then, if we aren't in danger of rolling further down the ravine we could talk about moving me."

Marshall rolled his eyes. Noting the deepening red color in Charlie's face, he shook his head disparagingly. "I suppose I'll just wait until you pass out and unbuckle you myself."

"It's my arm; this is gonna hurt."

Marshall understood Charlie's apprehension, but he was starting to get worried about his own situation. He couldn't get out of the back of the truck. One side was up against a boulder, and the other side was so bent up that he knew he would never get that door open. The front driver's side was the only clear exit and Marshall couldn't get through there with Charlie hanging from the seat belt in front of it. Besides, the younger man looked like he was already about to pass out from the position in which he was hanging.

"Oh, for God's sake Eppesie! Man up would ya?" Marshall said, as he reached down and pushed at the latch to the belt so securely entrapping Charlie.

His efforts were met with a weak yet tenacious attempt to push his hand away from the latch, which only made Marshall more determined. "Do the damn math! Look at the angle of the vehicle: it's greater than ninety degrees. Oblique. Big. That means that we're not about to slide down the mountain, not unless you do something stupid like shifting _your_ weight forward." Finally, he sighed in exasperation and settled back in his seat, unable to release the harness from around his associate. "How much do you weigh, anyway?"

Charlie snapped back, "Enough to make a difference, Pennsie!" _...nothing like a bit of annoyance to get the adrenalin going._ "Just like you: fail once and then sit and whine and do nothing."

"Nothing? Nothing? I'll show you nothing!" Penfield tossed half of a laptop -- he was happy to note that it was Charlie's -- to the far side of the seat. "I'll get us out of this…" Moving hastily forward, he shifted his weight again, determined this time to chew through the shoulder belt if such action was required. "…if it's the last thing I…" He didn't finish the phrase as the truck suddenly tipped forward over the edge of the embankment. "Shit!" Marshall yelped as Charlie cried out, almost in unison, "Don't move!"

An overhanging thickly needled pine branch had covered the front windshield but as the truck tipped forward, Charlie was able to see the nature of their predicament. They were about to fall over the precipice! "Do your _own_ math, Penfield!" As Marshall slowly inched backward to the rear of the vehicle, Charlie continued, "Your weight is all that's keeping us from going over the edge!"

"This is all your fault, Eppes," Penfield told him, face white. "Anybody tell you you're a lousy driver?"

Still hanging upside down, Charlie's head pounded like a sledgehammer with every beat of his heart, still he could not help but retort, "I'm a very good driver. The road was in terrible condition."

"So are you, Eppsie." For a moment, Marshall's voice sounded almost empathetic. However, his self-righteous attitude quickly resurfaced as he continued. "So, what are you gonna do about this? And don't try to tell me that you can apply the Eppes Convergence to this one."

"You wouldn't know how to apply the Eppes Convergence if it handed you a Diophantine Equation with all three variables identified," Charlie handed back to him.

The truck shifted again and both men froze. The silence lasted long enough for Charlie to regain his equanimity. After doing a little more math in his head, Charlie spoke again with his tone dramatically altered. "Uh, Marshall?"

"Yeah, Charlie?"

"I don't think this thing is very stable."

They paused to listen to a slender shower of rocks as it tumbled down the hillside. Marshall spoke in a whisper, "I think you're right, Charlie."

As if in response to the minuscule amount of noise, the truck creaked loudly and slipped a few more centimeters, inciting a small gasp from both men.

"Look, Marshall," Charlie gulped, as he struggled to swallow in his inverted position. "I think… I think you need to crawl out through the back windshield."

"Stupid idea, Eppes." Shooting down the proposal, Marshall began listing the reasons why it was a bad idea. "One: the windshield is intact. I'd have to break it."

"So break it, Penfield. Get out."

Charlie's interjection went ignored as Marshall continued. "Two: once my weight is gone, this truck is so over the hill. Do the math."

"I did Marshall." Charlie swallowed hard again. "I did." _Another cascade of pebbles… _"You'd better get out while you can. Break the back windshield, and then call Don. He'll send help."

Both men silently contemplated the situation, neither one liking what was coming next.

Another smattering of pebbles pushed Charlie into speech. "Get to it, Penfield."

"Uh, Charlie?"

Anticipating an apology of some sort, Charlie turned his head slightly, so he could see his companions face and replied, "What, Marshall?"

"How do I break the windshield?"

Charlie rolled his eyes and let his body go slack again. "Oh, Good Lord, man. Just hit it with something!"

"It's shatterproof glass! I don't have anything to break it with."

"Use your head, Penfield. Literally, if you must!"

_And Don thought that Charlie's head was in the clouds, incapable of common sense? _

Struck with an idea, Charlie lifted his good arm and pointed into the back of the truck. "Laptop, Penfield. Hard object. Smash the damn window."

"Oh. Right." The sheepish reply came as Penfield shifted his weight to retrieve the laptop from where he'd tossed it.

The bottom half of Charlie's laptop was banged and bruised--what a metaphor for real life!--but the important part of the electronic marvel was the hard case that surrounded the electronic inner workings which was solid and still intact.

Penfield tapped the back windshield with the broken laptop. A single key popped off the keyboard, but other than that, nothing happened.

"Harder, Penfield."

He struck it again, resulting in a few more keys soaring across the cab. "I _am_ doing it harder."

"Apply a few more foot-pounds of force," Charlie told him. "Pretend the windshield is old Professor Weidinger."

"You mean the bastard who gave me an A minus in the Advanced Course of Glovchevskian Geometric Design?"

"The very one." Unable to resist one last jab at his nemesis, Charlie added. "He gave me an A plus, you know."

"That piece of sh--!" Penfield slammed the laptop against the back windshield with all the fury of a student scorned. The glass shattered in tiny fragments, spraying down onto the ground with stray bits flying forward to pelt Charlie's half-turned face. "Hey! It worked!"

"Right." Charlie took a deep breath, knowing what was coming next. "You have to move fast. This thing may start sliding again, and neither one of us can afford to have you damaged. As soon as you're free, call for help."

********************************************************

The inner workings of the human mind had fascinated Charlie all his life -- and they fascinated him now. Despite the thousands of hours that he had spent studying such things, it still seemed odd to him that he should be capable both of screaming his guts out and of detached observance at the same time. Yet as Marshall's shifting weight and escape from the Jimmy sent the vehicle over the edge, and tobogganing through the underbrush down an ever-steepening slope that seemed to be a bottomless pit, he marveled at the truth of the matter. There was both mind-numbing terror as he simultaneously anticipated the agony of a sudden stop and dreaded the lack of ever stopping -- and a slow, almost relaxed perusal mulling over the events that had led to this E-ticket ride from hell in the first place.

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

As Larry had noted with a certain glee in Charlie's office, the stars had aligned. Much "luck" had brought together all the working parts of the equation; but Charlie did not believe in luck. At least he hadn't, until it all seemed to go bad... At any rate, it was serendipitous that old frienemy Marshall Penfield happened to be in L.A., presenting a series of guest lectures at Cal Sci. Further evidence of the emerging pattern came when a mutual Princeton alumnus contacted Charlie. He was heading up the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management graduate program at the University of Washington, or 'U Dub', and Charlie's assistance was requested. A group of students studying climate variability needed someone with the necessary expertise to set up glacial monitoring stations for them. Data from the stations would stream back to the U Dub server, where the QERM students would utilize statistical theories, applied mathematics and decision science to determine, in part, why it was raining on Charlie's toboggan. Their old classmate had been thrilled to obtain Marshall's services as well, and considered his phone call a wild success.

Final proof of the wisdom of accepting the challenge awaited Charlie at the Craftsman that night when he appeared for dinner. Charlie was late, and Don was already there telling his father about a special assignment the team had received that day. It seemed that Ian Edgerton had tracked one of the F.B.I.'s 10 most wanted to the wilds of Washington, and was requesting back up with the take-down. Although there were five field offices between L.A. and Ian -- San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, Oregon and Seattle -- Edgerton wanted people he had worked with before and could trust. The official line was that Seattle needed a few experienced agents that the perp wouldn't recognize. The Seattle office would remain heavily involved, but Don, David and Colby were booked on an F.B.I. jet at 0600.

Charlie had done some rapid computing -- the next day was Friday, and hopefully with Marshall's help he could complete this consult over the weekend, thereby missing few classes; plus, the U Dub contact had said the equipment was ready and waiting -- and made a quick and fateful decision. "Can a consultant fly on the jet?" he asked.

Arrangements had been, of necessity, fast and frantic. Charlie had consulted for agencies like the NSA, Homeland Security and the CDC. He had flown half way around the world giving lectures for prestigious universities such as Cambridge, Oxford and Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and had flown first class every time. None of that held a candle to the jet the FBI used on this trip. He and Marshall sat across from one another on the private Leer jet, playing chess and bickering incessantly. To the three agents who sat on the other side of the jet, trying to go over the information Edgerton had sent on the fugitive they were going to capture, the mathematician's chatter sounded like a foreign language. Don looked over at Charlie and Marshall and simply shook his head, but Colby couldn't help becoming absorbed in their current argument.

"Knight to Queen's four."

"Are you sure? Sucker move."

"So? I'm a sucker. Take me up on it, Eppes."

"I beat you the last time you tried to sucker me in, Penfield."

"That was ten years ago, Eppes. And you cheated."

"Did not. How can you cheat at chess? Especially with a crowd and a judge?"

"You made a move, and then took it back."

"Did not. Didn't touch the Rook. Or the Pawn."

Colby leaned over to whisper in Don's ear. "They for real? They really remember a game from ten years ago?"

Don tossed a half-disgusted glance in the direction of the two mathematicians. "You should listen to Charlie's memories of trying to talk to my father. Painful, Colby. Truly painful."

The mathematicians ignored the three brawns. Penfield pushed a Pawn forward. "I propose that we use my Theory of Particle Deviation to align the statistical analysis for the QERM project, Eppes."

"Won't work, Penfield." Making his move, he added, "Check."

"Oh, like your Convergence Theory will? Taking your Rook, Eppes. What are you going to do now?"

Charlie leaned back in his chair, the seat belt loose around his hips. "Bishop to King's three. Checkmate, Penfield. And we'll use Roundtree's unpublished monographs to establish a baseline for the climactic variability."

Penfield's jaw dropped. "My...my God, Eppes! That's brilliant!"

Colby stared, first at the chessboard, and then at the pair of mathematicians. He couldn't help the question. "Which do you mean? The chess game, or the monograph stuff?"

The mathematicians favored the FBI agent with a look; Charlie's indulgent, Penfield's pitying. It was Penfield who spoke first. "Both, Agent Granger. Both."

Colby shut up.

The next thing Charlie knew, he, Penfield and the three agents had taken over a Port Angeles bed and breakfast -- and Don was standing over the trunk of Ian's car, loading bullets into the biggest gun Charlie had ever seen.

Suddenly apprehensive, he had frowned at his brother and their friends, and almost-shyly asked them to be careful. Colby had nodded in Penfield's direction -- Marshall was standing to one side, loudly negotiating on his cell phone with the guide who would eventually rent them the GMC -- and then winked at Charlie. "Hey, the odds are in our favor, Whiz Kid. There's only one of him and a dozen feds. I'm more worried about the two of you playing nice."

That conversation had occurred less than twenty-four hours ago, but it seemed as if months had passed. As the Jimmy slid at a breakneck speed down the wet slope, Charlie found himself terrified… but also fascinated and maybe even a little bit exhilarated at the speed that he was traveling. Unable to stop them; numbers, velocities, descent angles and deceleration ratios flashed across his mind. _'And, to think most people see their lives pass in front of their eyes when faced with imminent death. I see equations and numbers. Although I suppose that is actually the biggest part of my life.' _Charlie thought wildly to himself.

All thoughts stopped abruptly, replaced with abject horror as he saw what lay in wait for him a hundred meters ahead. A huge broken tree trunk was lying on its side with jagged spikes of hard wood pointing directly at him… and it was approaching at mind numbing speed.

It was, as always, in the angle. The slightest deviation, a mere degree or so, and the branch of wood would stake him like a vampire. A degree in the other direction would shatter that same branch into toothpicks against the hard frame of the Jimmy. Which would it be? Increasing speed would bring the answer closer--as well as the final resolution. Rapid calculation: Charlie would have the answer in six point three seconds, the resolution by the seventh, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

Five. _Closer to the branch._

Four. _That wasn't a branch. Not really. The end looked sharper than a Neolithic spear point and twice as deadly. _

Three. There _were probably bacteria on the branch, too._

Two. _I think I'd better close my eyes now._

One. _Maybe if I squirm?_

_I...I..._

The pain didn't hit for three point six seconds, which surprised Dr. Eppes three point six seconds later since he had--obviously erroneously--assumed that the transmission of neuronal agony was all but instantaneous.

Meanwhile, Penfield was staring down the slope after him, his jaw hanging open until he saw the Jimmy stop.

"Eppes! Eppes!" Penfield looked frantically around, hoping and praying for someone… anyone to wonder past. "Eppes! Can you hear me?" Talking to himself now, Penfield fumbled with his cell phone. "Damn, what is his brother going to say?" Trying to persuade his suddenly thick fingers to dial 911, he shouted out again, "Eppes!"

There was no answer. Wasn't that just like Charles Eppes, getting one Marshall Penfield in trouble? It was just like that time in old Suarez's class, that project that they did together, when Suarez accused Penfield of riding on Eppes' coattails.

"Not this time, Eppes!" Penfield swore. "Damn it, you are not going to die out here! Not and leave me holding the bag!" Without thinking, he scrambled down the slope, clutching the cell phone, trying to both keep the thing to his ear and use the same hand to maintain his balance.

Then it happened. The probability of the occurrence, if Drs. Eppes and Penfield had been motivated to calculate it, would have been substantial… somewhere in the realm of thirteen point four to one. These kinds of numbers would indicate that it was all but preordained for Dr. Penfield to place his left, non-dominant foot onto a small rock that had been loosened from its vantage point by the downhill plunge of the Jimmy. That rock skidded out from underneath Marshall's foot, causing him to lose his balance.

The rest of Penfield's journey was equally problematic. He tumbled down the hill, rolling end over end, to come to an ungentle stop beside the damaged SUV.

The pain in Dr. Penfield's ankle left no doubt in his mind that it was broken, and the angle of the two halves of his cell phone led him to the conclusion that the electronic marvel was equally as broken.

Dr. Penfield gave what was perhaps the shortest speech of his career, one that would never be presented to his students:

"Well, Shit!"

********************************************************

"Our fugitive's name is Russ Proley," Ian Edgerton informed his L.A. colleagues. "I lost him right around here, " he said pointing to a designation on the map called Appleton Pass. "He's not from this neck of the woods, but he knows how to get around in backwoods country. He's not going to be easy to track down. He's scared and he's moving fast. So far he has been heading southward, deeper into the wilderness country."

Don forced his mind back to the job at hand. This was the sort of thing that he loved, hiking into the back country with nothing more than a canteen at his hip and a rifle in his hands. Beautiful country, too, with tall pines crowding the clouds above. He inhaled; yeah, pine scent, enough to fill a man's soul. It didn't much matter that he was here to capture a man. Don felt at peace.

And he could tell that he wasn't the only one. Don could see from the man's face that Agent Granger was looking forward to the job at hand as well. Colby had his own share of dodging mountains and trees from growing up in Idaho, and the younger agent carried his rifle with a familiarity only gained through experience. Sinclair, not so much—a city boy at heart - but the man was still a good one to have at his back.

They'd bag the critter, haul his ass back to jail - unless the fugitive decided that there were worse things than death - and then Don would hang out for a few beers until they could hook back up with Charlie and that Penfield dude. "He armed?" Don asked.

"Not sure." Edgerton chewed on the toothpick that emerged from the side of his mouth.

Don looked more closely at the map that Ian had laid out, and then turned to Colby. "What was the name of the glacier Charlie and Penfield were going to set up equipment?"

"The Carrie Glacier."

"Damn." Don took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. "I was afraid you would say that. If Proley keeps going the way he has been his course will take him pretty close to where Charlie is gonna be."

Ian shot a glance at Don. He had looked almost relaxed moments ago, but now his face showed tension around his eyes. "There's a lot of country out there Eppes. The chances that Proley would run across Charlie are pretty remote." In spite of his own words, Ian's shoulders had tightened up, and the muscles in his forearms were bunching as he gripped his weapon a little tighter. "He's going to stick to heavily wooded areas for cover… that glacier is open territory. If Charlie and his friend are on the glacier, they'll be perfectly safe."

Don nodded, adding his own self-reassurance. "If he's eluded you for this long, he's not stupid. He knows to say away from everyone if he can." He knew Charlie had to be miles away from their fugitive; nevertheless, he would be a lot more comfortable after this guy was brought safely into custody. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's mount up."

********************************************************

Charlie wasn't entirely sure how he had managed to survive the impalement of the Jimmy, which he had been securely strapped into, by the largest natural skewer he had ever had the misfortune of seeing, but he had. The operative words here were 'had been' for he was equally unsure why he was no longer firmly held in place, upside down, by the seat belt. The belt was still across his chest and tangled around his left arm... Damn it! Why had he thought about his left arm? The pain had not really diminished that much but now it seemed to increase exponentially once his attention had been brought to its current position, wedged between his torso and the top of the steering wheel.

Charlie's upper back and neck were bent at an awkward angle as he rested against the top of the cab. The now loosened seat belt almost looked suspended from the seat which was currently above him.

Charlie swallowed hard. He could see Penfield outside the Jimmy, writhing on the ground. Just like Penfield: get the man out of the truck so that he could call for help, and what does he do? He falls down the hill and hurts himself, although at his vantage point he couldn't see what Penfield's injury was. The man was supposed to be a genius, but had no common sense. Charlie made up his mind then and there not to ever let Penfield live this down.

In the meantime, it was up to Charlie to get them out of this and he hardened his resolve. Charlie was the one with the FBI clearance, the one who had participated in all of those cases with Don. Charlie had one thing that Penfield didn't: experience. He had followed Don around, listened to Don's team as they described this gun battle and that. There weren't any guns around, but this was an emergency and Charlie was certain that he could apply some of the same principles.

Okay, Penfield wasn't going anywhere, which meant that Charlie was going to have to. Step one: remove himself from the vicinity of the truck. Seat belt: loosened and no longer a problem. Time to slide his arm out from around the steering wheel… it was going to hurt, so he'd do it fast--

Ow. Ow. Owowowowowow!

Passing out...

Crap.

*******************************************************

"Over here," Ian called. "Got a couple of tracks."

The sniper dropped to his haunches, inspecting his find. "Right shoe size," he said, "and moving fast. Light, too. He hasn't picked up anything. He's moving toward Seven Lakes Basin. At this rate he'll come up on Heart Lake by the High Divide within the hour."

Don frowned. "Let's take a look at that map, Ian."

Edgerton pulled the map out and laid it across a flat rock for Don to look at. He immediately checked to see how far their quarry was from that glacier.

"Hey, Don! Ian!" Sinclair called out, his hand to his cell next to his ear. "That earlier sighting? The Seattle office just confirmed it. Said Proley dropped this guy and snatched a handgun from his place. They say we should consider Proley armed and dangerous."

"What kind of gun?" Colby wanted to know.

Sinclair consulted his phone. He snickered. "Beretta Bobcat."

Colby too laughed, although grimly. "Little girlie gun." He hefted his own rifle, enjoying the weight. "At least we don't have to worry about him getting the range on us. Comes right down to it, we can take him out at a distance."

*******************************************************

The sky was grey.

Charlie lay on the ground, taking in the picture. The sky was grey, and there was one discernible cloud that defined itself clearly against its dingy background occupying some thirty-six percent of the available atmospheric view.

Getting up and onto his feet wasn't going to happen any time soon. He was shivering, but he unhappily realized that it wasn't due to the cold. There were beads of sweat covering his face, and his hair was matted with it. Sticks and dirt turning into mud were grinding themselves into the back of his head. He felt entirely wrung out.

He'd gotten himself out of the Jimmy, but at a cost. He couldn't tell for certain, but his arm might have been broken… again. Blood still oozed, from the gash over his left eye. Yes, lying here on the ground was definitely the appropriate course of action for the next few minutes.

"Eppes?" The voice was weak and tremulous.

"Penfield?" Charlie allowed his head to loll painfully to one side so he could see his colleague. "What are you doing down here?"

Without answering the question, Penfield began to gush with relief. "You're alive! I thought you were dead! You were making the most phenomenal sounds when you collapsed. Why didn't you crawl out when the truck was at the top of the hill?" he added querulously. "It would have been so much easier. Then, I wouldn't have had to fall down the hill after you."

"I'll remember that for next time," Charlie told him, the sarcasm heavy. "Did you call for help?"

"How could I?" Penfield pointed to the broken cell phone that lay just out of reach.

"Didn't you call for help before you started down the hill after me?"

"A little gratitude, Eppes! I was trying to save you!"

"You should have called for help first, Penfield. Nobody knows where we are." Charlie could not see the broken cell phone and was unwilling to experiment with lifting his head just yet. "How badly is it broken? Maybe we can fix it."

"I don't know…" Penfield reached feebly to one side, apparently grabbing for the phone. After a few seconds, he gave up, groaning loudly. "I can't reach it."

Charlie forced himself to focus on the situation at hand. Penfield's fall down the hillside had obviously left him with a debilitating injury and therefore even more incapable of action than he had been before. The Jimmy was trashed, Penfield's phone was broken, it was raining and he felt like a sad little pile of wet and chilled excrement.

It didn't take him long to realize that step one was for him to stop feeling sorry for himself. He would have to take charge of the situation, since it was obvious that Marshall was incapable of getting them out of this. Step two; he would have to get up on his feet. Step three; convincing himself that this was all going to turn out fine.

Really.

He prepared himself mentally for the prospect of movement while he ruminated aloud, mainly for Penfield's benefit. "The monitoring stations have GPS chips embedded, do they not?"

He could hear the relief in Marshall's voice. "You're absolutely correct. This is expensive equipment, and the university needs to be able to trace its location in case some overzealous hiker decides to move it."

Charlie kept talking as he rolled to his right. Sharp pain seared through his left arm, but he increased the speed of his roll so that his momentum would bring him to his knees. Once he was kneeling, Charlie looked up to the grey sky, noting that the hazy drizzle had once again become a light sprinkle, and allowed the cool rain to wash his face. It actually felt pretty good to be mostly upright. The pounding in his head had subsided and if he kept his left arm cradled with his right against his body, he was pretty sure he could move without too much pain. Charlie looked over to where Marshall was sprawled on the ground, trying to determine what his injury was.

"Where are you hurt?"

Penfield glanced down at his leg and practically whimpered. "I think my ankle is broken."

"That's it?" Charlie asked incredulously. They way Penfield was frozen in place; he would have thought the man had broke his back. "You can't move, you can't reach your cell phone, you are totally helpless because of your ankle? Excuse me, but weren't you the one telling me to man-up back there?"

Charlie glanced around at their location. Just through the trees to their left, he could see a small lake off in the distance. "I think that's Heart Lake off to the left. That would put us at the bottom of the High Divide ravine… that's just northwest of the glacier by maybe ten miles or so." Pausing to breathe through the pain in his arm, Charlie had an idea. "Hey, I need to get this arm strapped up. Take your belt off."

Marshall gawked at Charlie. "My belt?"

"I need your belt to strap my arm to my body." Still on his knees, Charlie contemplated the possibility of trying to get to his feet. "We have to go find help and you're obviously not going anywhere." Looking back toward the SUV, Charlie continued. "And I need to get back in there and try to find my cell phone."

Grumbling to himself, Marshall began to take his belt off. Walking on his knees, Charlie moved closer to him so that he could get a better look at his injury. Beneath Marshall's shiny new hiking boots and crisp denims, his ankle could have been swollen like a sausage and Charlie would not have been able to tell. But his nice new pants, although quite dirty were not ripped. There was no blood that Charlie could see, and his foot seemed to be in the right orientation to the lower half of his leg.

Marshall finally got his belt off and handed it over to Charlie. Doing his best to look like he knew what he was doing, Charlie wrapped the leather strap around the back of his shoulder, looping the end around his left wrist and cinching it as tightly as he could without screaming like a little girl. Once his injured limb was secure, Charlie moved forward, intending to more carefully examine Marshall's ankle.

"Hey, wait… maybe you shouldn't touch it. After all, I'm –"

"Shut up for a minute, Marshall." Charlie said as he slid the leg of Penfield's jeans up past the top of his hiking boot. The boot came up at least two inches above the ankle. Charlie pulled at the sodden sock to try to get a look at the skin. He didn't see any major swelling or bruising, but he was admittedly above the ankle. Penfield's sharp intake of breath made him hesitate.

"Where does it hurt?"

Marshall sat up a little further so that he could get a better look. "The whole thing hurts! And I can't begin to move it, Eppes. How are we gonna get me out of here?" There was a note of thinly veiled panic in the other man's voice.

Charlie gave him a scrutinizing look. The other man did look a little worse for the wear, but no more so than he must. "Look, we need to get to that lake at least. Most of the lakes in this region have hiking lean-tos." He tried to sound sympathetic, but a little disgust seeped through. "If your ankle were badly broken, it would be swollen up into your calf by now. I'm sure it's just a sprain. If we get you up, the boot should act as a brace." He waited for Marshall to look up at him warily before he added, "It's either that or I leave you here alone while I go look for help."

He didn't wait for a response, but instead pulled one knee up and got his foot underneath him. Carefully rising to his feet, Charlie held out his right hand and waited. After a moment, Marshall reluctantly took it. Charlie looked at him trying to convey confidence rather than the irritation he was feeling and said, "On three?" Marshall nodded.

"One..." Marshall bent his left knee and planted his left foot on the soggy ground.

"Two..." Charlie got his own feet braced to pull up Marshall's 230 pound, six foot frame.

"Three..." With a mighty heave, Charlie pulled Penfield to his feet. Unfortunately, both men lost their footing on the slippery forest floor. Rather like something out of a slapstick comedy, Charlie's feet slipped out from under him and he fell backward with his legs coming up in a perfect pratfall imitation. The toe of his right boot came in direct and sudden contact with Marshall Penfield's groin just as he lost the traction from his own footing. Charlie yelped in pain when he hit the ground, but it was drowned out by the howl coming from Marshall Penfield as he rolled to his side clutching the part of him that he liked best.

*****************************************************

A little over a mile to the West, Russ Proley paused when the solitude of the mountains was shattered by the most unearthly and piercing scream he had ever heard. He shivered, and looked around nervously. What the hell kind of animal was that?

A fat raindrop bounced off his bald spot and he swore silently to himself, shifting the pack on his back. Damn his 20-year-old arrogance, anyway. He had thought it was such a great idea to hide the armored truck loot on the glacier. Just his luck, the damn guard died and he was sent to rot in federal prison for years. He had finally come up with an escape plan, but it had taken another five years of finagling to come up with a good enough reason for a court date so that he could enact that plan -- years that he spent in the prison library, reading about glacial movement and global warming. Now here he finally was, an overweight, balding, institutionalized, middle-aged man stumbling through woods that hosted some God-awful new breed of animal, trying to reclaim his money before someone else found it.

Proley brushed the rain off his forehead and muttered. "That's it. I'm not getting caught in a flood and ripped to shreds by some mutant beast that didn't even exist last time I was here. I'm gonna wait out the storm in a lean-to at Heart Lake." He changed direction just slightly, took one step and then stopped. "What if they don't have them things anymore?" he wondered aloud. As he stood, the rain increased in both the "cat" and "dog" variations, and he made up his mind quickly. Heart Lake was his best chance at shelter -- and he was taking it.

*****************************************************

Charlie let Marshall writhe on the ground for a while and painfully made his way to his feet. He swayed dizzily for a moment, and then headed back toward the Jimmy. He had a vague memory of the rather circumspect guide who rented them the vehicle mentioning something about a first aid kit, which was strapped under the driver's seat. Even if it was there, he was unsure that he could get to it in his current one-armed condition, but Charlie had another reason to look around the GMC. Somewhere inside was Amita's new digital camera, already attached to her also-new tripod. She had requested some scenic shots of the glacier, sending the camera and tripod along for the adventure. Since both were gifts from Charlie, he knew that both were expensive - top-of-the-line equipment; sturdy, even though lightweight, specifically designed for backpacking. If he could extend the legs to their full 60" length, and then have Marshall tape them together with something from the first-aid kit, maybe they could use the result as a walking aide -- providing he could convince the man to try and get up, again.

Marshall's moans were dying off when Charlie finally reached out his good arm to steady himself against the back of the Jimmy. He breathed raggedly and regarded the shattered rear window. Tiny spears of jagged glass remained at the edges of the frame, and he shuddered, realizing the risk Marshall had taken for him. It really was a miracle the man hadn't severed an artery climbing out that former window; if he wasn't such a big wuss – bless his broken ankle – Charlie could be facing this wilderness alone and upside-down. He shuddered again, and looked closer. Charlie was relieved to see that there were no jagged, bloodied edges containing parts of Marshall's backside. Of course, his subsequent slide down the mountain might be responsible for that as well, but he doubted it. If Marshall had so much as scratched an itch, Charlie would have heard about it by now.

Carefully, he made his way to the front of the truck. The tripod and camera had been on the floor of the passenger side of the front seat -- which was good news. A glance at the hill he had so recently traversed revealed a scattering of luggage and equipment that had managed to bounce out of the rear of the Jimmy. _So much for the GPS-in-the-glacial-monitoring-equipment idea... _Chances were good that his cell phone had met the same fate while he was hanging upside-down; Charlie didn't see it through any of the windows as he made his way to the front of the vehicle. The driver's side door was still hanging open from when Charlie had pried himself out, and now he used it to lower himself painfully to his knees in the soft mud. He sighed with relief when he spied both the promised first aid kit, and the camera equipment, which was now lying on the interior roof of the vehicle. In fact, Charlie even noted a dark stain on the edge of the camera, and suddenly understood that he had been conked in the head with his birthday present to Amita -- that must be where the still-bleeding gash came from. The knowledge made him frown. He had paid good money for that equipment, and then sent it to live with a beautiful woman. It thanked him by trying to crack his head open? Ungrateful inanimate object!

It didn't take Charlie long to see that extricating the first aid kit was going to take some work. With the truck upside-down as it was, he could easily see that the seat frame had become slightly bent during the accident. He had to lean very far into the cab to grasp the tripod with his fingertips, but eventually he drew it close enough to get a good grip. Charlie backed out of the Jimmy and turned to make his way back to Marshall.

Penfield was sitting up now, and glaring. Charlie tried to smile apologetically as he sloshed to a stop next to him. "That was an accident," he explained. "How is the Little Bilateral Closed Set?" He grinned. "Or is that 'Compact Set'?"

Marshall was still fairly red in the face and now his glare became a petulant pout. "I hate you," he squeaked.

Charlie shoved the tripod in his direction. "I understand," he acknowledged. "Take this." Marshall refused to lift a finger, even looking away, and Charlie sighed. "Look," he bargained, "you can find a way to use this as a walking stick, or sit in the mud for the foreseeable future, or let me try to help you up again. Those are your choices."

Marshall looked back at him, glaring again, and reached up to grab the tripod. "What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Take a picture of my good leg and paste it on my bad one?"

Charlie rolled his eyes. "Take the camera off and give it to me -- I'll put it back in the truck when I go back for the first aid kit. Keep the strap. Extend the legs of the tripod and strap them together." He shrugged, wincing as he instantly regretted the action. "Worth a shot. So to speak."

Marshall groaned and started the process, soon handing Charlie the camera without so much as looking at him. Charlie turned around and started toward the Jimmy again. His arm was killing him, and he was growing tired. He was starting to feel a little nauseous, as well, with small rivulets of darkness nibbling at the edges of his field of vision. He stood at the back of the vehicle so long, his good hand steadying himself against it, that even Penfield got worried. "Eppes?"

Charlie shook his head -- he may have just fallen asleep standing up, like a horse -- and mumbled something Marshall couldn't hear before he cautiously took himself back to the driver's door. He set the camera inside and then fumbled with the bungee cord securing the kit to the seat's undercarriage. With only one hand to work with, the ordinarily simple task took a great deal of time. Charlie was disheartened to discover, even when he had finally unhooked the cord, that the first aid kit was still jammed into place. He pushed from one side. Then he would switch, and pull from the other. He was just about to give it up as a bad job when he made one last desperate pull. He was totally unprepared for the kit to react as if slathered with butter.

When Charlie had started walking again, Marshall Penfield had returned his attention to the tripod. He had just found a way to strap together the extended legs when he looked up to shout out his triumph for Eppes' benefit. Instead, he was just in time to see the first aid kit apparently fly out of the cab and smack Charlie in the face. He fell over backwards as if shot. The genius had knocked himself out. At least that was what Marshall assumed when he saw Charlie fall over backwards.

"Damn it, Eppes!" he swore under his breath as he tried to use the makeshift tripod cane to get up. By the time he managed to get himself off the wet muddy ground, Charlie - with a new red mark across his right cheek, walked over with the offending first aid kit.

"I thought you'd knocked yourself out, Eppsie."

Charlie graced Marshall with a sarcastic look, but decided against getting involved in a bickering match. His head hurt, he was exhausted, and the newest fall had jarred his broken arm again bringing the painful throb to the forefront of his senses. Basically, he was altogether miserable.

"I see you managed to get up; how's the ankle?" Rather than pay attention to Marshall's complaining reply to his question, Charlie opened the first aid kit and rummaged through it looking for clean bandages to apply to his forehead and aspirin for the throbbing pain in his arm. Much to Charlie's surprise and delight there was actually a folded sling in the bottom of the kit. It was even the kind that had a strap that went around your waist to hold the arm in place across the body. Getting himself into the sling was a little harder than he'd anticipated, but Marshall didn't disappoint, being positively useless as an assistant. However, Charlie eventually got himself strapped in which helped immensely with the frequent stabbing pain he felt every time his arm was moved or jarred.

"Look, let's head down toward the lake and see if we can find one of those shelters."

"Yeah, then what are we supposed to do, Eppes, have a picnic? There aren't any phones down there are there?"

"Shut-up and walk," Charlie grumbled, leading the way over the wet and rough terrain. "If you've got a better idea, I'd like to hear it. At least it'll get us out of this damned monsoon." Penfield hesitated and then reluctantly followed, after deciding he would rather be with Charlie in a hiking lean-to, whatever the hell that was, than all alone in the wilderness with a wrecked Jimmy. It was a laborious trip. Without the camera perched on top, its extended legs strapped together, the tripod actually converted to a frighteningly handy crutch, and fit neatly under Marshall's armpit – however, that did not keep him from complaining loudly about how uncomfortable it was. Then, there was some significant pouting involved when Charlie less-than-patiently explained that Marshall should remove his windbreaker and wrap it around the camera-mount to serve as padding. While it was true that this made the 'crutch' infinitely more comfortable, it was also true that it made Penfield infinitely wetter, and he was not happy about that either. They were further slowed by the tripod's tendency to sink into the mud every time Marshall tried to move it.

For his part, Charlie kept veering off course. One eye was now nearly swollen shut, and the pain radiating from his arm and throbbing in his head combined to send the professor spinning out of control more times than either of them cared to count. On at least two occasions, he over-corrected and lost his last remaining ounce of balance, slamming into the ground. Once there, he would roll and howl in agony until Marshall brought the tripod close enough for Charlie to latch onto it with his good hand and drag himself into a mostly upright position. The sling that had been so securely snug before was now uncomfortably tight as his abused and mangled arm continued to swell.

The GMC had ended up a little less than a mile from Heart Lake. If they had both been healthy, Charlie and Marshall should have been able to hike the distance in half-an-hour or less, even given Penfield's lack of physical prowess. They were both a mess, however, so it was not surprising that in half-an-hour they had covered only a little over half the distance. Nor was it surprising that neither one of them heard anything that would indicate they were no longer alone. They had no idea Russ Proley was there until he was right in front of their faces.

*****************************************************

The rain had been a source of constant complaint to them all, but had it not alternated drizzle-to-monsoon all day, the mudslide at the side of the road may not have been so obvious. All four agents spotted it around the same time, but it was Don who reluctantly put their thoughts into words, veering toward the edge of the muddy dirt road. "Something big went over the edge," he said, "and the skid looks fresh. We'd better take a gander."

Ian grunted and nodded. Soon all four men were staring, in varying stages of dread, at the littered hillside that led down to the ravine. At the very bottom, they could see the wheels of the upside-down GMC that was literally skewered on a huge broken tree branch. Who was anyone kidding, that branch was more like a tree trunk and it was rammed right through the windshield. Anyone driving that vehicle would have been impaled. No one spoke until Colby knelt and dug at something submerged in the mud at his feet. In a few seconds, he straightened back up, shaking the clinging environment off a cell phone. "You think this thing still works?" he asked no one in particular, applying pressure to the power button. Seconds later, he called out, "Uh, Don…"

"Colby?" Turning toward the younger agent, Don was caught off-guard by the unexpected expression of alarm on his face.

"Don, I think…" He hesitated and Don almost yelled, "What?"

Certain of the facts, Colby held the phone out toward his SAC. "This is Charlie's cell, man!"

This time, Don did yell, "What?!"

"Don, this thing has got Amita's picture on it! Who else would have something like that?"

"Crap!" Don swore. Nothing more needed to be said; everyone was thinking the same thing, that the skid belonged to a certain rental piloted by two world-class mathematicians.

Ian had already started down the steep hillside, intent on searching for survivors, and after one last look at the cell, Don scrambled after him. Colby pocketed the muddy phone and joined the queue. David started out in last position, but hit the same rock that had previously attacked Marshall. He catapulted past the other agents, arms wind-milling, low and desperate "Whoa! Whoa!"s muttered under his breath -- but managed to keep his own feet under him.

Seconds after Sinclair slammed into the Jimmy and stopped his forward motion, Colby, who had been chasing him, skidded to a halt beside him. "Dude?" he questioned. "You all right?"

David nodded nonchalantly and inhaled a lungful of air. "What took you guys so long?"

By now, the four agents were in the process of surrounding the upside-down vehicle. They bent to look through shattered windows. Don paled when he spied bloodstains in both the front and back seats. It didn't matter which one was driving - both Charlie and Marshall had been hurt, that much was clear. But at least there was no human shish-ka-bob to deal with.

He straightened again when Ian, who had moved beyond the GMC, held up a portion of Penfield's cell phone. "Looks like neither phone made it," he noted.

Don frowned. "Where the hell are they? Why didn't they stay with the vehicle?" '_Charlie knows better'_ was the nonverbal part of his unhappy comment.

Ian was kneeling, looking at something in the mud, and he answered almost automatically. "Maybe they headed for Heart Lake, to get out of the rain. There are hiking lean-tos there where they could take shelter." His brow furrowed. "I've got a set of tracks heading off that way."

The other agents carefully picked their way across the mud to join him. Colby arrived first. "You _think_?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Don. "You're the tracker!"

Ian didn't look up but used his hand to indicate the tracks he was studying. "I'd say there's a definite set of hiking boots there," he said, pointing. "Looks like about a size nine."

Don was impressed -- and relieved. "Charlie wears a nine," he informed the group, "and he was wearing his hiking boots. So was Penfield. We finally convinced him to get some last night – probably should have let him keep his tennis shoes… he'll have a fine set of blisters to go with whatever else happened."

Ian pointed again. "Yeah, here's a larger boot; an eleven by the look of it," he mused. "What I don't get is this mark beside it. It's kind of a… partial print. Something three-pronged…" He looked up at the other agents. "I've tracked a lot of things, but I do not have a name for this."

Surprisingly, it was David who put it together. "Maybe he's using something for a crutch -- hurt his leg?"

Ian nodded, thoughtfully. "Could be. But what? Can't be a limb they picked up somewhere -- what kind of limb has three prongs on the end? Whatever it is sinks into the mud with every hop. It's got to be slowing them down."

Don glanced uneasily at the cloud-filled sky. "Gets dark early here," he reminded them. Still the senior agent, he made a difficult decision. "We're still after Proley. Granger, Sinclair -- you think you can get back up to the road and find his tracks again?"

Colby protested. "But Charlie..."

Don interrupted. "Ian and I will keep on these tracks. You guys spot Proley, you call my cell and give us a location; don't try to take him yourselves."

Colby stared at Don for a few moments and then sighed, turning towards David. "Come on, city boy. Dare ya to get back up as fast as you got down."

********************************************************

Proley watched them approach for quite a while. They weren't exactly quiet about it. The shorter of the two men was in front. From his viewpoint at the fork in the trail, Proley could easily identify a bloody bandage over one of his eyes, even though it soon disappeared under a halo of wild curls. One arm was strapped to his body in a sling, and he cradled the injured wing with his other hand. Bringing up the rear was the most ridiculous sight Proley had ever seen. The taller man was obviously injured as well. He was dotted with blood, something white was wound around one forearm -- and he was using -- Proley almost laughed aloud when he figured it out -- _a camera tripod!_ as a crutch.

He almost faded into the brush and let them pass, until it became clear that their destination was the same as his. The two had been snarking like fishwives ever since he had first spotted them. When they drew close enough for Proley to make out some of the words, he wondered for a second if they were even speaking English. Then the taller one broke off in the middle of a diatribe regarding something about limit theorems in probability and the rainfall statistics of the Olympic Peninsula to whine out a question that sounded more like a demand. "Eppsie," the tall one groused, "how much farther is this stupid lake? I think I'm getting a blister on my good foot."

He probably still would have let them pass, and changed his own plans, if the shorter one hadn't turned around with a great sigh. "It's your own fault, Marshall. Don and I tried to tell you to wear the boots before we came out here so that you could break them in a little."

The other one responded loudly in an immediate affront. "How the hell was I supposed to know the F.B.I. has some sort of superior knowledge about this godforsaken place? I thought your brother was just helping you cheat me out of a hundred dollars!"

This time the shorter one did not turn around; he just snorted and plodded ahead. "At least you have great powers of observation, Pensie, and noticed the boots everyone else on the team was wearing. I guess since you knew they'd be searching for Proley in this same general area, you reconsidered our advice, huh?"

_Oh, shit,_ Proley thought, completely missing Blister-Boy's reply. He stiffened, and nervously looked around. There was an F.B.I. search team looking for him, around here? He thought quickly; the time was fast approaching when he would have to make his presence known or slink quietly off the beaten path. Obviously, whoever these two were -- why ever they were here -- they were not part of the F.B.I. Not unless the F.B.I. had suddenly turned into the Keystone Kops. But they were both injured, would be easy to control -- and would make excellent hostages if the search team caught up to Proley before he had accomplished his goal. After all, the tall one had referred to the short one as the brother of one of the agents. He made up his mind quickly. With the sure-footedness that came from having been raised in mountain country, and the stealth he had picked up later, when learning to successfully navigate prison shower rooms, Proley circled behind the men.

Charlie found himself sweating and shivering, having to concentrate entirely too hard on walking, which used to be a fairly simple task. He was determined not to let Penfield bait him anymore -- but the screech coming from behind him changed his mind. The tiny hairs stood up on the back of his neck, and more to reassure himself than anything else, Charlie spoke as he slowly turned around. "You'd better be falling, Marsh..."

Russ Proley, one arm firmly hooked around Marshall Penfield's neck, stood behind him and grinned at Charlie with a mouth containing only half the usual number of teeth. "Don't worry," he said. "I won't let him fall."

******************************************************

Don and Ian covered the same half-mile that Charlie and Marshall had in less than half the time. The trail was clearly marked at the fork, and Don started to veer toward Heart Lake when Ian held up a hand to stop his progress and dropped to the ground. "We got something, here."

Don squatted next to him and saw what looked like a new pattern to the tracks. "It's been a while since I did any real tracking, but that doesn't look promising. What do you make of it?"

Ian started indicating disturbances in the mud. "The prints are all over each other -- like there was a scuffle." He dropped his hand and turned his head to look seriously at Don. "Another set of hiking boots comes in here. Bigger -- I'd say a 12 or 13." He half-stood and moved in a crouch toward the spot where the path branched off toward the lake.

Don straightened and followed, and this time actually beat Ian to the punch. "All the prints head off to the lake."

Ian nodded, turning to face Don as he stood, his face dark. "Looks like Charlie and Marshall are together now, in front of the new addition."

"Who...why..." Don was interrupted by the vibrations of the cell hooked to the waistband of his jeans. He quickly brought the phone to his ear. "Granger? You got something?"

He could almost hear Colby nod. "Listen, Don, we've been following Proley's tracks back down through the ravine. He's on some kind of old hiking path or something now, and it looks like we're headed right back in your direc... Shit."

"Shit."

Don and Colby spoke simultaneously as Granger led Sinclair around a slight bend on the narrow path -- directly into the junction where Ian and Don were already standing.

David couldn't see past Colby's broad back. When he heard his partner's clear sound of distress, he sped up a little. "What?"

Ian voted for the vocabulary du jour. "Shit," he confirmed. "I think we just figured out who the third set of tracks belongs to."

*******************************************************

Three shapes, all as tiny as stick figures on a piece of scrap paper, wound their way along a slender path better suited for a wagon train of mice. Leaves to either side of them were forsaking their apartment-style living on tree branches, instead opting for a rapid career in yellow and orange before falling to the ground in a grim parody of an adjustable rate mortgage: dead, brown, and being tramped into the ground. A hawk screeched its disappointment overhead, telling the humans that scaring off the game was downright unfriendly.

Proley didn't care. "Move it," he growled, pushing the barrel of the Beretta into Penfield's spine to hurry him along.

"I'm trying!" Penfield snarled back. "My ankle's broken, damn it!"

Charlie couldn't help but be a little impressed. He'd never thought that he would ever hear the day when Penfield was less cowed by a gun than by the discomfort of his injuries. How un-Penfield-like, he decided.

Proley had no such background to draw upon. "Gonna break your back if you don't get a move on," he threatened.

Too serious… Charlie tried to keep the tempers down. "We've just been in a pretty bad accident, we're moving as fast as we can," he soothed.

He didn't like what he saw in Proley's face. A light came into the convict's eye, the same light-bulb-like affair that routinely hit Charlie's students toward the end of a particularly well developed lecture. Only, Charlie sincerely doubted that their kidnapper had Charlie's and Penfield's best interests at heart.

"I think we can move a bit faster," he said. A grin followed the statement. Without warning, Proley reversed the Beretta in his hand and, using the butt as a club, whacked Penfield across the temple.

Penfield's eyes rolled back into his head. The much-maligned tripod-cum-crutch slipped from his fingers and toppled off the trail, falling down the hillside. The much-maligned mathematician toppled off the trail only to tumble down after his crutch, limp body demonstrating the utter lack of consciousness.

Charlie grabbed a tree branch to keep himself upright, terror coursing through him. "You killed him!" Shocked and distraught by the prospect of this, Charlie leaned over to get a better view of the body of his fellow professor, which lay unmoving among the bushes.

"Probably not," Proley waved the Beretta at Charlie, the barrel looking the size of a Civil War cannon, "but that can change."

********************************************************

This was no longer fun. This was no longer a job-related hike in the woods, a chance for Don to enjoy life at the department's expense.

This was serious. There was no possible chance that either Charlie or Marshall could have persuaded Proley that an impromptu lesson in algebra would be in the convict's best interests, therefore the group from the FBI was going on the assumption that Proley was forcing the pair to accompany him. Proley might have one of the wimpiest guns in the history of mankind, but it was still a gun and it was still capable of depriving the world of a certified genius – not to mention a really fine brother.

Don didn't need Ian Edgerton to decipher the story that the tracks were telling. The steps of the group ahead of them were getting shorter and shorter, as if two mathematicians were flagging in both strength and health. Even the three-pronged puncture track that was serving someone as a crutch demonstrated that forward progress had slowed for Proley and his captives.

Mixed blessing: the FBI agents were gaining on their quarry, but the innocent civilians were getting that much closer to their respective eulogies. All four agents dropped into a ground-eating pace that ate up the distance, maintaining silence. Hand signals sufficed for what little communication was needed.

********************************************************

The gun wasn't needed. Proley grabbed Charlie by the collar and threw him into the lean-to. He doubted that the mathematician would have been able to successfully navigate over the steep log step that led into the front of the structure without assistance. Charlie soon found himself sprawled against the back wall of the large slanted wooden structure. The hiking lean-tos around Heart Lake were quite deep and spacious. They even came equipped with wooden pallets along the side walls to keep sleeping bags off the floor. The rear wall on the right side had a nicely carved wooden bench and the remnants of a small table and chair occupied the far left corner. The opening faced toward the lake and the slanted roof had a deep overhang to prevent rain from reaching the back of the structure's interior if the wind happened to blow directly into the front entrance.

Charlie hastily looked around, gritting his teeth against the moan of agony that his arm demanded. Was there anything he could use as a weapon? Chair: broken. Table: broken. Bench: intact but in use by a pair of nesting field mice who, contrary to typical mouse behavior, hissed threateningly at Charlie.

Proley was undaunted. He kicked some dirt into the faces of the attack mice, who prudently remembered their heritage and scurried off into the cold outdoors in search of more congenial roommates.

Content, Proley placed his backside onto the bench, graciously allowing Charlie to remain on the floor. Charlie eased himself into a marginally more comfortable position, his arm shooting stabs of pain through the flesh despite his makeshift sling. It was entertainment time; Proley allowed his gaze to fall onto his captive. "What are you doing up here, anyway? Where's your pack?"

Long exposure to bullies throughout the ages had taught Charlie that a direct confrontation worked best when you had a superior force coming to your rescue, usually in the form of an older brother who owed you for doing his math homework. Since the last time that Charlie had done Don's homework was some fifteen years ago, Charlie chose not to rely on a superior force coming to his rescue. He concentrated on looking non-threatening. "I don't have a pack. We left it in the Jimmy."

Proley snorted in amusement. "Yeah, I saw it. Rolled it good and proper, didn't you?"

Charlie didn't dignify that with a response.

Proley didn't care. "What are you doing up here?" he asked again. "Camping?"

"No. We're studying the glacier."

Proley frowned. "Yeah, I heard about that. You a scientist?"

Explaining his position in the greater scheme of things would only confuse and anger his captor. Charlie took refuge in a more simplistic answer. "Yes."

"Hah. That explains the tripod." Proley leaned forward. "How fast is that thing moving?"

Charlie blinked. "Huh?" _The tripod is not moving at all_, he thought, _you saw to that… _

"How fast?" Proley stood up, and loomed over Charlie. "How fast is the glacier moving?"

"Uh… Oh…" Charlie tried to think. He gulped, trying to remember everything he'd learned in preparation for this little jaunt. "Uh, the rate of flow depends largely on the volume of ice in movement, the slope of the ground over which it is moving, the slope of the upper surface of the ice, the amount of water the ice contains, the amount of debris it carries, the temperature, and the friction it encounters."

It went over Proley's head. "How fast, genius? Try using words with one syllable." The gun suddenly looked very large in his hand, and Charlie couldn't figure out how the weapon had appeared there from Proley's pocket. Proley shoved the barrel under Charlie's nose. "How fast?"

"Uh...six feet per year. More or less." Charlie hadn't a clue whether that was right or wrong. But it seemed like a good guess.

"Six feet? Per year?" A multitude of expressions crossed Proley's face, and Charlie wasn't able to decipher any of them. "That's all? Six feet?"

"Pretty close." He looked up at his captor awkwardly, hoping he had said the right thing.

Apparently not. A look of fury appeared. Proley grabbed Charlie by the shirt, dragging him to his feet. "Only six feet?" he roared. "I busted out of jail for _six fucking_ _feet_ per year? My stuff will be safe for ten more years!"

The gun, still in Proley's hand, was icy cold where it touched Charlie's ear. Charlie didn't move, didn't protest… didn't say a word.

With an expression of disgust, Proley tossed him back onto the floor of the lean-to. "What the hell do I do now?" The question was clearly rhetorical. Proley thought over his options; it was painful to observe.

It was going to be more than painful; it was going to be permanent. Proley faced Charlie, the gun now aimed at the mathematician. "No witnesses," Proley rumbled. "No witnesses."

*******************************************************

_Blam!_

Every man in the FBI scouting party knew what that sound was. Gunfire.

David took the identification one step further. "Beretta."

No need for hand signals. As one, they broke into a run.

********************************************************

Proley faced Charlie, the Beretta in his hand. "No witnesses," he rumbled.

Charlie closed his eyes. This was it. No more Eppes Convergence. No more Cognitive Emergence Theory, not even another Attraction Equation to give his accountant heart failure over the book advance. Never to see the light of understanding in another student's eye--

Bam! A section of the overhang reverberated with the force of impact with a long metal object.

Charlie's eyes flashed open, and Proley whirled around.

Dr. Marshall Penfield was standing there, and he was pissed. "You!" he yelled at Proley. "You pushed me!"

Charlie had seen Don swing a bat many times… he had seen his brother knock more than one ball out of the park. A later critique would show that Dr. Penfield lacked technique, in that his shoulder failed to drop in order to apply the most force to the tripod that was now doubling as a makeshift bat. But Charlie didn't care. It was the most beautiful home run that he had ever seen. The tripod connected with Proley's arm.

The _wrong_ arm. Penfield whacked Proley on the arm that wasn't involved with holding the gun. Proley howled with sudden pain, but didn't drop the Beretta.

Charlie scrambled to grab the broken chair leg, anything to defend himself and Penfield from the bullets that would surely follow.

_Blam!_

********************************************************

The noise and the tracks led to a ramshackle lean-to in the middle of nowhere. The team of FBI agents ran as fast as they could up to the structure while maintaining relative silence. Using silent hand gestures for communication, they surrounded it, approaching the open front from both sides. It had been several minutes since the gunshot, and nothing since. Was Charlie lying on the floor, eyes wide open and sightless? Had Proley committed another murder? Don and Ian came around from the right; David and Colby from the left and almost in unison shouted, "FBI!"

Don took in the scene in a fraction of a second.

Dr. Marshall Penfield was on a bench, leg elevated, with a tripod doubling as a crutch by his side.

Dr. Charles Eppes was sitting on the floor. His arm was clutched to his side, a suspicious patch of red decorating the cloth. A small Beretta was in his good hand, trained on the third occupant of the lean-to.

The third person in the lean-to was, Don realized, Russ Proley. Proley had a black eye, a rapidly swelling lump on his arm, and his wrists were tied together.

Don took another look. Those straps on Proley's wrists weren't ropes. They were canvas straps, decorated with the word 'Nikon' printed over and over, which is how Don realized that the straps that had originally turned the tripod into a reasonable facsimile of a crutch were now doubling as a set of handcuffs, size large.

Charlie looked up, grateful to see his brother and the other agents. He dropped the gun he was holding to the floor and breathed an audible sigh of relief. Don kept his weapon trained on Proley as he moved around the criminal sprawled on the floor to get closer to Charlie. "You okay?" he asked tentatively.

Charlie nodded and said that they were fine, but his words were less than convincing as he winced in pain. Don holstered his weapon once Colby and Ian had proper handcuffs on Proley and he squatted down next to his injured sibling and looked between the two mathematicians with bewildered awe. "You guys took down a hardened criminal, incapacitated him and tied him up while injured. How?"

"It was a team effort." Marshall intoned from the bench, which brought incredulous stares from everyone including Charlie.

"Actually," Charlie put in, "Marshall totally saved my butt. Proley was about to blow my head off... something about no witnesses... when Marshall came up behind him madder than a wet hornet and broke his arm with the tripod."

Marshall blushed slightly and scratched his neck, but this experience had given him a new perspective on his old friend and rival. "Yes, I did, didn't I? Yet, it was Charlie who used a broken chair leg to knock him out long enough for me to tie him up; which I find incredibly impressive, especially after being shot."

Don's head whipped around and he focused on Charlie. He immediately began groping the younger man looking for bullet holes, which caused Charlie to wince when his arm was jiggled. Charlie pushed Don's hands back with his good arm, breathing heavily to control the pain.

"I'm okay, Don. It's just a graze. With the bone already broken, I hardly even noticed."

The anger in Don's voice took both of the academics by surprise. "Are you two out of your minds? You could have been killed. Proley has already murdered one man who got in his way and he was about to do the same to you. What were you thinking; taking on a killer like that?"

Charlie understood that Don's tone was born more out of fear and the release of that fear than anything else; but he didn't like being scolded like a child, especially in front of Marshall Penfield. "Hey, we didn't go looking for Proley, he ambushed us. This was a matter of survival; plain and simple."

Marshall piped in quickly. "That's right; you guys should be thanking us for capturing this guy for you. Hey, do FBI consultants get hazard pay, or maybe a finder's fee?"

Don turned to Marshall, incredulous. "A finder's fee? Are you nuts? What for?"

How Dr. Penfield managed the superior look on his face with an ankle blown up like a balloon was beyond Don, but the math professor managed it. "Special Agent Eppes," he huffed, "this miscreant was discussing with your brother--at the top of his lungs, I might add--that he had traveled here to retrieve his ill-gotten goods. Given that information, I highly doubt that he secreted his stash in the state of Massachusetts."

Ian was immediately interested in this information. He pulled Proley to his feet with a smile. "So your stash is up here is it? I was wondering why you came up here, now I know. The Justice Department will be very interested in that information."

Proley gave Charlie and Penfield an evil glare. "You will regret getting in my way, mark my words."

Marshall immediately began scratching nervously at the look of pure malice that Proley directed toward both Charlie and him. Don had heard more than enough. "Get him out of here, Granger."

David radioed for medical assistance, as well as transport for their prisoner. Once everything had been called in; Ian, David and Colby escorted Proley back up through the ravine to the road where more agents were going to meet them. Don stayed behind with the injured scientists until medical assistance could arrive. Marshall who was sitting on the bench laid his head back against the wall and looked to be asleep while Charlie looked miserable sitting on the floor.

"Come on, Bro. Let's get you off of this floor."

Don took Charlie's good arm and draped it over his shoulder to raise the younger man up to his feet. Charlie wobbled precariously as a wave of dizziness washed over him, causing the agent's concern to spike. Don helped him over to one of the sleeping pallets against the side wall of the structure and sat him down. Don suggested that he lie down but Charlie shook his head.

"No, that hurts my arm too much. I just need to lean back against the wall here for a few minutes. I'll be okay."

Charlie was as white as a sheet and shivering. His clothes were soaked through due to being out in the rain all afternoon, so Don sat down on the pallet next to him on his right side and draped his arm around Charlie's shoulders to try to share some of his own body warmth. Marshall had opened his eyes and watched the brothers with an odd look on his face. Don noticed his gaze and said, "You look like you fared a little better than Charlie. What happened to the Jimmy? Did Proley cause the accident?"

Charlie rolled his eyes and sighed, knowing that this was not a conversation that he wanted to get into again. He and Marshall had been bickering about this all day as it was and he spoke up before Marshall had a chance to throw the blame at him.

"No, Proley didn't cause the accident. The road was wet and unstable and it washed out. We got stuck about halfway down the ravine. Marshall got out before the truck slipped and slid the rest of the way down and ended up where it is now. Marshall made his way down to the truck, but hurt his ankle in the process. I finally managed to get out of the truck and we were headed down here to get out of the rain when Proley came up behind us. He hit Marshall and threw him down the embankment." He paused, recalling his feelings at that moment. "I thought he had killed him." Charlie's voice hitched a little, but he continued his story. "Proley forced me to come down here to the lean-to and threw me inside. He wanted information about the glacier, how fast it was moving. When he found out that it wasn't moving as fast as he thought, he got angry… really angry. He was about to kill me when Marshall showed up and used that tripod like a baseball bat on Proley. I grabbed the broken chair leg and clubbed him in the head but not before he pulled the trigger. Marshall tied him up while I held the gun on him in case he tried anything. Then you guys showed up."

Don sat there glancing back and forth between the two mathematicians. "You know, you guys did alright. Really, you held it together; you had each other's backs. You did as well as any agents in the same situation. That was some impressive teamwork guys."

The genuine surprise on each of their faces was a little funny to Don. Marshall Penfield and Charles Eppes: friends, even when they would refuse to admit to it all the way to their dying day. Much to his relief, David was back fairly quickly with a freshly stocked first aid kit and blankets to wrap around the injured men.

Don didn't like the look of Charlie's arm. It was swollen and misshapen and his fingers had begun to turn almost black. The bullet graze on his upper arm wasn't too bad. It was deep enough that it would require stitches and would definitely leave a scar, but it wasn't too hard for the field agent to bandage it up. Thankfully, it was only another twenty minutes before the rescue personnel arrived, properly stabilizing Charlie and Penfield's injuries.

The rain had let up leaving dampness in the air that was almost as bad as the rain itself. Charlie couldn't stop shivering from the dank cold air and Marshall complained almost constantly. It took two portable baskets and seven men to get Charlie and Penfield back up to the road. Charlie wanted to walk out, but between the gunshot wound, his broken arm, and the mild concussion he had suffered, the medical rescue personnel weren't going to allow that. As it turned out the young mathematician drifted in and out of sleep all the way up the ravine.

They spent a very long night in a short-staffed and underequipped rural county hospital and an even longer morning filled with seemingly endless phone calls. Charlie spent most of breakfast trying to explain to his colleagues at both Cal Sci and the University of Washington why they had lost most of Cal Sci's rather expensive monitoring equipment and why the U-dub QERM project had come to a screeching halt because of a federal fugitive and a mud slide. Don, on the other hand, spent the morning trying to find someone among the hospital's medical personnel with the authority to release the two mathematicians.

It was almost noon when Professor's Charles Eppes and Marshall Penfield stepped onto the FBI's private jet headed for home. Neither one looked particularly well. Marshall was sporting crutches and a fashionable green fiberglass cast that encased his ankle and lower leg due to a hairline fracture of the talus bone. Charlie had a bandage around his head and a sling supporting his arm that was casted in an equally fashionable yellow cast that went from his fingers to his elbow.

As Marshall moved down the aisle of the jet, seeking the most comfortable seat, he let the crutches get too far out in front of his body; the tips slipped, and he wobbled. Charlie, following close behind, quickly reached out with his good hand to steady his frienemy. "Pensie," he grinned when all had returned to stable ground, "want me to get a tripod for you?"

Marshall huffed and the agents within hearing distance laughed. Don shook his head and smiled fondly at his brother. "Come on, Chuck; that was kind-of a cheap shot, don't you think?"

Penfield pivoted and flopped into his chosen seat, vaguely reminiscent of a koi out of water, and looked up, a smile of delight transforming his ordinarily sour expression. He winked at Dr. Eppes. "_Chuck._ Now why didn't _I_ think of that?"

Colby leaned over to whisper into David's ear, his expression wry. "The never-ending math fight," he deadpanned. "Is this round two or three?"

David grinned and shook his head. "I'm not sure," He whispered back, "but after the condition they left Proley in, I'm staying the hell out of it."

THE END

(SWAK,SG)


End file.
